Clone (2002)

After a few jam sessions, Mike and Leo Kottke decided to resituate where there would be tape decks. Though no album was intended, the recordings of bass and guitar interplayfulness started to sound albumic. The duo returned several times to Paul DuGre’s tiny hut in Burbank, California, often banging on pots, pans, or whatever else was lying around. David Z was brought in to mix because of his proven prowess on Leo’s album “Standing In My Shoes” (not to mention Purple Rain). The homemade feel of this album doesn’t undercede some of the intricate patterns within.

As an example of this homegrown collaboration, Mike got to Burbank and told Leo he had just driven through New England with his Clone singing – they were both abjuncts to Bruce Hampton’s band when Outside Out was released – and while Clone had just played trumpet at first, they decided to harmonize, and so they would practice in Mike’s Volvo, and of course it was funny for others in toll booth lines to look over and see two of the same person singing in harmony, wearing the same orange shirts… And Leo musta liked that image, so they sat in a famous old diner on Sunset Blvd – no, I mean really old and famous – and both wrote the lyrics to Clone. Mike and Leo, of course, aren’t clones, as Mike couldn’t even begin to play even one bar of the shit that comes out of that guitarists hands, but he does try sometimes before giving up, but the point is this is a song about clones everywhere, and the album sounds like the low key experimental vibe that started flowing at an old american diner.